Stuart Kaminsky's irascible Soviet detective Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov travels to Siberia to find a murderer in a village full of exiles and incompetents.
Music: String Quartet No. 1, Op 7, by Bela Bartok, performed by the Borromeo String Quartet.
Alan surveys that American celluloid genre called "film noir": sinister, evocative, and doom-laden, both in style and content.
Image: "The Photographer," by Joaquim Alves Gaspar